Deeplinks Blog posts about NSA Spying

Secret mass surveillance continued to spark global controversy this year, yet the National Security Agency’s dragnet programs unconstitutionally monitoring Americans are stretching into their second decade. Ignited by news reports in 2005, eight years before Edward Snowden’s revelations blew the lid off illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying in 2013, mounting concerns around the world about the threat to free expression made 2015 a watershed year in the battle to restore privacy.

The NSA’s collection en masse of the call detail records of millions of ordinary Americans ended quietly at midnight November 29. The bulk collection was phased out after a 180-day transition period provided for in the USA FREEDOM Act. The USA FREEDOM Act was signed by President Obama on June 2, 2015, and amended section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, which the NSA had claimed gave it authority to collect the records, to specifically prohibit the bulk collection.

We wrote previously on what that means for the collection of records and how it affects our cases against the NSA.

Like clockwork, cynical calls to expand mass surveillance practices—by continuing the domestic telephone records collection and restricting access to strong encryption—came immediately following the Paris attacks. These calls came before the smoke had even cleared, much less before a serious investigation completed. They came from high places too, including CIA head John Brennan and New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton.

Seasoned law enforcement officers and the heads of spy agencies should know better than jump to conclusions before the facts are in. Sadly, these premature demands for more surveillance in the wake of tragedies are not unprecedented.

We all know justice is blind. But that is supposed to mean that everyone before it is treated equally, not that the justice system must close its eyes and refuse to look at important legal issues facing Americans. Yet the government continues to convince courts that they cannot consider the constitutionality of its behavior in national security cases and, last week, in an important case for anyone who has ever used Wikipedia, another judge agreed with that position.

Being Muslim can’t be the basis for law enforcement surveillance. That was the message from the Third Circuit on Tuesday when it told the plaintiffs in Hassan v. The City of New York that their lawsuit could go forward. The plaintiffs are suing over the New York Police Department’s suspicionless mass surveillance operation revealed by the Associated Press in 2011.